Taking Stock

There comes a point in everyone’s life where in order to keep moving forward you have to take stock of where you have come from. To turn around and to admire the view. To reflect on the journey so far.

Having done very little on this blog recently I think it is time to take stock and unstick myself ready to move along.

Taking Stock of the Journey

There are several embryonic posts: started but not quite completed, unpublished and lurking in the background on this website. Lots of ideas have flitted through my head but not made it through the interface between me and the keyboard. Yup, I’m stuck and this is time for a stock take.

In my day job I work from 8am to 6pm with an extra hour and a half for traveling. Since Christmas this has been even more stressful than it was before and my psoriasis flared up with a vengeance. I had been waiting for an appointment with a dietician but twelve weeks ago, in desperation, I started an elimination diet. This has successfully stopped ALL nosebleeds and identified foodstuffs that cause my gums to bleed BUT the psoriasis just carried on flaring and getting worse. There is an excellent online community www.inspire.com which has a forum devoted to psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Many people using the forum are trying to relieve their condition through diet and the concensus seems to be that things do get worse for a few months before they get better. A paleo autoimmune diet is popular which is fairly close to the elimination diet I have been following. Nightshade foods – the ones I love: tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, potatoes etc are strongly implicated in triggering inflammatory disorders in the body.

My Favourite Fruit

Last week I gave up waiting for diet alone to fix the problems and asked my doctor to prescribe steroids to relieve the pain of the psoriasis which had moved in scale from mild to moderate in its coverage and in many places was cracked and bleeding as well as flaking large scales of skin. He reminded me that steroids were not a cure and that using them can make things worse. He also had a look up my nose and expressed surprise that I had managed to go for so long with out a nosebleed because there are so many blood vessels close together and close to the surface. What this really means I don’t know but at least the leaky pipe has stopped leaking.

Other things which have stopped since starting my journey are fatigue, depression and brain fog (a.k.a. cotton wool head). Last time I tested for zinc deficiency that had gone too.

I still have quite heavy growth of dark hair on my face so suspect that the PCOS has not been affected by the restricted diet – maybe it never will go. I have lost a fair bit of weight – weight gain being associated with PCOS.

Stock taking over; it has been an interesting journey so far, if rocky underfoot.